FathersAndDaughters

This is the 1st time I have posted to The Mighty.

I need to forgive my father. He is 84 and though healthy, I don’t know how many years he has left. I know that forgiving him is important for my health: as this situation contributes to my struggles with autoimmune issues, fibromyalgia and treatment resistant and depression. But I don’t know if I can.

After I found out that my husband of 20 years, had an affair, my world turned upside down. I asked my dad to support me. (Not financially.) I begged him to let my husband know, that he, my dad, was disappointed in my husband. My dad would not. I told my Dad that I needed his support, so I could feel the stability, that was taken away. I wanted my dad to help me figure out what to do. I asked for his reassurance that my kids and I would be ok. I needed him to literally stand next to me.

But instead, he said he couldn’t do any of those things, bc it was crossing his boundary. Apparently, ‘entering’ into my personal life was against his principles.

Idk why I didn’t leave instead of listening to his tongue lashing that followed. He lectured me on what was ‘right’ and what was wrong’, and how my asking for his support was against his ‘principles’. When he was done scolding me, I felt like I had been run over.

My husband’s betrayal, and my dad’s willful abandonment added to the depression I was already in, was too much for me to handle; I no longer wanted to live. I checked myself into an inpatient facility.

How can I forgive my Dad for making everything(!) in my life more difficult? For deserting me and for his role in my pain?

In the past 5 years, I, have not seen or spoken with him. Though I have supported and encouraged my children to continue their relationship with their grandparents, they felt conflicted doing so. Effectively, sticking to his principles, cost my father his only daughter and 2 of his grandchildren.

Even if he believes that choosing his principles was right, he has not apologized for the hurt that it caused me.

How do I get past this hurt and anger?

#Father it’s better to have a absent father then a mentally straining one he is the main reason I have depression, why I get into these dark thoughts/moods about myself out of nowhere and I’m so cool with solitude because it’s normal for me when it shouldn’t be I’m tired of sacrificing my feelings for him so he can be in control I’m so done with him idk what to do anymore I want him in my life but he doesn’t even try to understand how I feel I think It’s time for me to let go so I can be happy without this dark cloud above my head

How do you get angry at an illness? At a fucking disease? I am not the only one who has personified an illness. I’ve given GBS a past and future, thoughts and feelings, and an angry personality. I picture a caricature god throwing bolts of lightning at victims below. I collapse into myself when I think of all that I lost: to play piano, to sing, to walk, to stand, work, cook, laugh - so much. It’s as if some vengeful force robbed me of almost everything. Still, of all that I’ve lost, the hardest is my inability to participate in the lives of my children and grandchildren.
Sure, I miss conducting. Not so much performing but rehearsing, comfortably dressed in street clothes in a warm space working with other musicians. Laughing. I miss sitting at a piano and singing. Or that point in a production when all the collaborative elements of theatre come together to create a miracle. I miss hearing my own music played. But those things are nothing compared to missing my family. I missed my daughter’s college graduation, her wedding. I missed the birth of my first grandchild. I missed performances, celebrations, picnics, games, baths and bedtimes. I’ve lost the moments, those simple yet remarkable moments that fill in the cracks and crevices of life.
My kids lost their father but were denied the closure and finality of my death. So instead of being able to grieve for me they have had to remain in a purgatory, throbbing in the background like a toothache or a blister.
It has taken me fourteen years to get to the point where I’m able to express this. Fourteen years. I am on a pebbled path that has shown me who I am without the musician, the father, the son, the brother, the husband. As I travel this path I like the man who I find there.
Isn’t thst worth it?